KAWHI: UNIQUE LAYER ON UNIQUE TEAMLEONARD’S BIG LEAP

Former Aztecs star is settling into the NBA nicely, with a little help from his mother

Most basketball players, when they get drafted and sign an NBA contract and receive their first paycheck with more 0s than a Padres line score, pledge to get their mother a house. And San Diego State’s Kawhi Leonard did.

He found a two-story, 4,700-square-foot home in a gated San Antonio suburb in the northwest section of the city. Had his mother’s belongings shipped from California. Got some furniture. Got her situated.

Then moved in with her.

He has the upstairs, she has the downstairs, and for the most part they do their own thing. The house has an intercom, and she calls him when dinner is ready. She keeps the refrigerator stocked, organizes his schedule, helps with laundry, filters all the requests for tickets from relatives they didn’t know they had.

“We’re good,” says Kim Robertson, his mother. “We get along great. I make sure he’s eating right, eating healthy, because I know if I wasn’t there, he’d be eating out all the time. I worry about all the outside things so he doesn’t have to deal with anything but basketball. I tell him, ‘Just play basketball.’ ”

Which is what he has done. In the early mornings at the Spurs practice facility, which — and he insisted on this — is a short drive away. In extra shooting sessions after practice. Before games. During games. After games.

Jeremy Castleberry, a walk-on guard at SDSU and Leonard’s best friend from King High in Riverside, flew to San Antonio last week for a visit during a Spurs homestand, tagging along to practices and games. One night, the house started to shake upstairs.

“I hear all this rumbling and crashing around,” Robertson says. “It was like there was a game going on up there.”

There was. Castleberry and Leonard – NBA rookie, member of the four-time champion San Antonio Spurs – were playing on a mini 6-foot hoop with a mini plastic basketball.

Says Robertson: “I said, ‘Kawhi, for real?’”

• • •

The San Antonio Spurs never had a private workout with Leonard. Coach Gregg Popovich never saw him play in person for SDSU, didn’t see him lead the Aztecs as a sophomore to a 34-3 season and the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 before declaring early for last June’s NBA Draft.

That was partly by circumstance, and partly by design.

“They didn’t want anybody to know they were onto Kawhi,” says Brian Elfus, Leonard’s Carlsbad-based agent, who didn’t know either. “Teams like that, they kind of wait in the wings and seize the moment. The Spurs, they’re just really comprehensive and thorough in their research … They had it mapped out.”

Leonard was pegged to go as high as fifth in some mock drafts and had limited his private workouts to teams with single-digit picks, and the Spurs, after finishing 61-21 last season, had the 29th. They had interviewed him a month earlier at the pre-draft camp in Chicago, but so did a lot of teams. Elfus never heard from them again until Leonard was walking across the stage on draft night in New York, having been selected 15th overall by the Indiana Pacers.

Spurs general manager R.C. Buford was on the phone, talking about a trade: “He’s ours.”

The Spurs front office had identified Leonard weeks earlier — “targeted him all along,” in Popovich’s words — and spent draft night discreetly trying to trade for a mid-first round pick. It would become their highest draft choice since Tim Duncan in 1997. And it cost them guard George Hill, who is referred to in practically every story as “the popular George Hill,” one of Popovich’s all-time favorite players, beloved and revered by a city that has no other major professional sports teams and no big-time college programs.

“If you’re going to get something good,” Popovich says, “you’re going to have to give up something good. It was tough, but we did it … We were fortunate enough to get him.”

The Spurs wanted Leonard because he’s 6-foot-7 and 225 pounds, with hands that measure 9 3/8 inches from wrist to fingertip, with a 7-0 3/8 wingspan. They wanted him because he ranked among the nation’s top collegiate rebounders, and because he’s not allergic to defense, and because he gave them size at the 3-man, or small forward, in a league increasingly defined by the position.

Popovich admits it: “Groom him in the mold of Bruce Bowen, is basically what we’re trying to do.”

Bowen, a 6-7 small forward, spent 12 years in the NBA, the last eight with the Spurs before retiring in 2009. He never averaged double-figure scoring (his career best was 8.2 points) but he was named to the NBA’s all-defensive first or second team eight times. The Spurs won three NBA championships with him, and none since.

“It’s a great education for Kawhi, just throw him in the fire,” says Popovich, who has started Leonard already 16 times with veteran Manu Ginobili injured. “OK, you get to guard Rudy Gay tonight. You get to guard LeBron James. He doesn’t shy away, you know? It’s nice. He sticks his nose in and he’s learning. He’s done really well.”

He averages 7.2 points and 4.9 rebounds in 23.1 minutes, but he leads the team in steals with 47 and has shown tantalizing flashes of potential— 24 points, 10 rebounds and five steals in a Feb. 21 loss at Portland. His Hollinger player efficiency rating is 15.84, seventh best among rookies and above the league average of 15.00 for all players. He was invited to the NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge for first- and second-year players during the All-Star break but sat out with a calf injury.

Popovich has made it clear, though. They’ll worry about his offense later. They want him to play defense now, and forever.

“The Spurs are all about defense,” says San Antonio veteran forward Richard Jefferson, who worked out with Leonard in San Diego over the summer and has become something of a mentor to him. “Most guys in this league want to prove that they can score, want to prove that they can shoot, want to prove that they are a starter.

“Kawhi, he wants to come out and prove that he’s a good defender. That makes him different.”

• • •

Getting over yourself.

It is an expression coined by Popovich, a polite way of saying there is no room for egos or bling or me-me-me on a team where the superstar is a soft-spoken, 6-11 forward who grew up in the U.S. Virgin Island and insists fame “is not me.”

“Our guys do a lot of intel,” Popovich says, “so we knew (Leonard) was good people, somebody who would fit in, somebody who would worry about the team more than himself. We already kind of felt he had gotten over himself.”

Getting over yourself: As the 15th pick, the NBA rookie salary scale guarantees Leonard $1.2 million in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season and $1.5 million next season, with the Spurs holding an option for years three and four. And he still drives the silver 2009 Chevy Malibu he had in college.

“I might get a new car,” Leonard says, “after my second or third NBA contract.”

Twitter?

“I don’t tweet,” Leonard says.

Perfect.

“This is not the real NBA,” Jefferson says. “Trust me, I’ve been around a few places, know a lot of guys, and this is not the real NBA. The Spurs do a great job, probably as well as any team in the league, at bringing in the right type of people because not everybody can mentally handle it, not everybody can put enough of themselves down to say, ‘Hey, it’s what’s best for the team.’”

Leonard nods.

“It’s a good fit for me, a good group of guys,” he says. “Nobody is too full of themselves.”

San Antonio is among the smallest markets in the NBA. It quiet, slow, bucolic even. The stop lights take forever to change. You can drive in any direction and, within minutes, be in gently rolling Texas countryside dotted by mesquite trees.

“We played video games, went to the mall, watched movies, talked, laughed,” Castleberry says of his visit. “As far as being out every night and partying, that’s not his thing.”

Most mornings Leonard arrives at the Spurs practice facility by 8:30 after stopping for donuts (a rookie tradition) and doesn’t leave until noon, fitting in extra shooting sessions before and after team workouts. He lifts weights. He gets treatment. He goes to the arena three hours early and does another session with Engelland.

“You give him a gym, and he’s good,” says Elfus, his agent. “He doesn’t like the road trips as much, probably because there are no gyms.”

The money, the celebrity, the arenas, the charter flights, the five-star hotels, the media …

“I don’t think it’s changed me,” Leonard said quietly after a recent game, slipping on jeans, a blue Polo shirt and a pair of Air Jordans. “I’m just a basketball player, that’s all. It’s nothing more than that.”